REVIEW: “Dangerous Orbit” by M. T. Reiten

Review of M. T. Reiten, “Dangerous Orbit”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact May/June (2021): – (Kindle) 8–17 Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

As a result of a past space war, Earth’s orbit has been rendered impassable due to a large amount of debris, prompting a concerted effort in the present to clean up Earth’s orbital space. One day, Neela discovers that one of her drones is not responding and decides to go on an EVA to investigate. There she discovers one of the unpleasant remnants of the war.

This is a well-written story packed with tension and excellent world-building. The author provides just enough setup to establish the dangers that the characters face, and then proceeds to focus on the conflict at hand. Since it’s focused mostly on plot, the characters end up mostly archetypal and shallow placeholders serving the story.

All in all, this is one of the best stories in this issue.

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REVIEW: “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.” by Fran Wilde

Review of Fran Wilde, “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.”, Uncanny Magazine Issue 40 (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Isabel Hinchliff.

Fashion design student Sara Sebastian has grown up listening to conflicting stories about the elaborate ball gowns designed by the Unseelie Brothers; her mother and aunt both wore one of these mysterious gowns on the fateful night when they met their husbands. When the Unseelie Brothers atelier reappears in New York City shortly before the Fête Noir Charity Ball, Sara and her cousin Rie are pulled from their final graduation projects to find the shop immediately. Once inside, Sara receives the opportunity of a lifetime: a paid contract to work at Unseelie Brothers and learn their trade. But as the ball inches closer, she discovers that the dresses she helps design may have more power than she realized, and a price with dangerous ramifications that stretch into her past.

This colorful, sparkling coming-of-age story filled my mind with whirling zoomorphic dress fabric and the giddy confidence of a young, talented artist surrounded by the best in her trade. The juxtaposition of a grounded New York college student with the messy next-generation aftermath of a cinderella-esque matchmaking ball was delightfully complex and riveting. I highly recommend it to any connoisseur of the modern fairy tale. 

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REVIEW: “Spore” by Tang Fei

Review of Tang Fei, “Spore”, Clarkesworld Issue 176, May (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

A story of hurt, legacy, and the legacy of hurt. The protagonist has inherited loss and pain from their father, but not his sense of being wronged or passionate need for justice. It sheds light on the fact that we can only sympathize and commiserate; we can empathize, at most. The feeling of having experienced something, however, is not something one can pass on. Nor can you transfer a need for retribution or validation.

You can, however, pass on trauma, opinions and traits, which comes across in this story in a strangely haunting way. Our protagonist’s decisions and choices are affected by this, as well as their father’s attempts at passing on that need for justice. Worth a read for the lovely imagery as well.

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REVIEW: “Proverbs of Hell for Writers” by Ian McDonald

Review of Ian McDonald, “Proverbs of Hell for Writers”, in Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans, eds., Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer (Hydra House Clarion West Writers Workshop, 2021): 181-188 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

McDonald closes off the anthology by giving us 94 pithy proverbs about reading, writing, and being a writer. Some obvious, some insightful, some humorous, some inspirational, this was a good way to end the collection. Having devoured the entire book over the course of four days, I now feel like maybe, just maybe, I can tackle again that glorious pain which is attempting to put words of fiction onto paper.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Matters of Life and Death” by Susan Palwick

Review of Susan Palwick, “Matters of Life and Death”, in Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans, eds., Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer (Hydra House Clarion West Writers Workshop, 2021): 175-179 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Palwick in her essay extols the virtues of what she calls “slow writing”, and compares the process of writing to that of learning how to spin and weave cloth — not as a metaphor, but as an actual explication of practice, talking about what she learned about how to write while she was learning how to spin: In neither case should you draft too fast.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “*Take As Needed” by Hiromi Goto

Review of Hiromi Goto, “*Take As Needed”, in Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans, eds., Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer (Hydra House Clarion West Writers Workshop, 2021): 171-174 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

When Goto asks, “What if you not only lose your imagination, but you also lose faith in your imagination?” (p. 171), it feels as if he’s exactly addressing me. I read this essay with great hunger and hope. More than anything, living through a pandemic has been exhausting, and it’s useful to read yet another reminder (so many of them in this anthology, and yet every one is worthwhile) that it exhaustion isn’t just physical, and it takes time to recover from, and “solace is necessary when you lose faith” (p. 172). What I didn’t expect, and which made the essay all the more impactful, was to find that it was not written by someone who has been through the dry patch and come out the other side; it was written by someone who is in the middle of it.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “On Mentors and Mentees” by Cat Rambo

Review of Cat Rambo, “On Mentors and Mentees”, in Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans, eds., Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer (Hydra House Clarion West Writers Workshop, 2021): 147-151 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

If you aren’t already convinced of the benefit of being both a mentor and a mentee, as a writer whether of SFF or otherwise, then hopefully you will be after reading Rambo’s piece.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Going Through an Impasse: Evading Writer’s Block” by Eileen Gunn

Review of Eileen Gunn, “Going Through an Impasse: Evading Writer’s Block”, in Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans, eds., Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer (Hydra House Clarion West Writers Workshop, 2021): 137-146 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Gunn’s essay is one of the longer ones in the collection, appropriate given how big a feature writer’s block often is in a writer’s life! — in fact, one could probably put together an entire collection on advice on what to do when you want to write but just can’t. Gunn’s approach is to talk about how to deal with writer’s block, rather than how to “cure” it:

I’ll help you analyze the way you experience blocking and offer some suggestions on how to circumvent the trauma and get on with your work (p. 138).

This process of analysis ends up weirdly feeling like sitting in a therapist’s office, being asked questions that probe us and challenge us to answer honestly and emotionally. I suspect people will have varying degrees of success with this approach: my own experience, reading the essay while in the midst of a writer’s drought, was to feel strong resistance to her questions and suggestions, a refusal to engage — even when her suggestions are exactly the same suggestions that I give to other people! And perhaps that’s part of my problem. 🙂

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Congratulations on Learning to Juggle — Now Get on the Unicycle” by Daryl Gregory

Review of Daryl Gregory, “Congratulations on Learning to Juggle — Now Get on the Unicycle”, in Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans, eds., Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer (Hydra House Clarion West Writers Workshop, 2021): 127-131 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Like Skillingstead’s piece, Gregory’s essay is all about how hard it is to be a writer — in the most supporting and uplifting way possible. As he points out, “this continuing, ever-morphing, and escalating difficulty is a sign that you’re on the right track” (p. 127). Not only does Gregory discuss the difficulty of writing in a sympathetic and caring way, his piece contains many concrete things that he does to get past and to lean into that hardness in his own writing. Not everything he does will work for everyone, but if you’re like me and really benefit from hearing about other writers’ processes, this is a very useful essay on that count. And so too is the reminder at the very end that “there’s great satisfaction in creating something beautiful, and joy in knowing you can try again” (p. 130).

You can try again.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Feed Your Engine” by Jack Skillingstead

Review of Jack Skillingstead, “Feed Your Engine”, in Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans, eds., Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer (Hydra House Clarion West Writers Workshop, 2021): 123-125 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The “moral” of Skillingstead’s very short essay is this:

I want to impress on new writers that “being a writer” has a lot to do with a working-class mindset (p. 124),

and it’s good advice, too, for writers that are not so new!

Writing is work. Oh, we’ve all had the days when the words come easy and flow off the tips of our fingers like magic; some of us have had the days when more acceptances than rejections arrive in your inbox; but for most people those days are probably the exception and not the norm, and those days only come on the backs of the days where every word is a slog, when “it can still be a real grind” (p. 124). It may seem like this is a sad, depressing piece, but in fact I found it the opposite: A reminder that we writer write because “it’s harder not to write than it is to write” (p. 125), and that while we may each be on our own train, there’s plenty of stations we can visit where we can meet up with other engineers. I, currently in a bit of a dry patch re: writing myself, found this piece enormously comforting.

Sara L. Uckelman2 Comments